Product Description

Dispensationalism is the majority report among evangelical Christians in America today. Tens of millions of Christians are committed to this perspective on the Bible and history. Sadly, they are generally so indulgent in this view that they seem little aware of alternative evangelical approaches to Scripture. In this devastating critique of dispensationalism, noted historian and biblical scholar John H. Gerstner, Ph.D. (Harvard), focuses on several of dispensationalism's leading errors. He demonstrates that dispensationalism not only provides a prophetic scheme for interpreting history, but a whole new theology that makes serious alterations to evangelical doctrine. Gerstner, a former dispensationalist himself, carefully demonstrates through abundant citation of original sources that dispensationalism promotes dubious evangelicalism, spurious Calvinism, and overt antinomianism. In this 2009 third corrected edition he also replies at length to his dispensational critics.

Gerstner relived the dramatic rise and divisive nature of dispensationalism, its notable feature since its modern inception being the ability to rear its flexible head despite critical schisms brought on by divisive leadership. In the same breath, John Gerstner denied this divergent entity any titular rights to historic millenarianism, providing several sources from antiquity pointing to the fact that although millenarianism was a distinctly Jewish prefiguration, its modern counterpart indeed had a form of the old spectre, but had morphed considerably into premillennialism. Shaped by popular demand, the desire to be expansive played into the waiting hands of the 'Brethren': 'Revivals in England tended to benefit the more scripturally-oriented Brethren as theological liberalism tended to weaken the established churches.' p 23 Derby's 'principle of separation' meant for traditional churches' losses to become Brethren gains. Through transatlantic prophetic conferences and the mushrooming of Bible colleges in the 20th century, which based their teaching on the Scofield Reference Bible, a new systematic theology burdened with dispensationalist premise was delivered right on the doorstep of many Americans. Dispensationalism was clearly on the ascendancy, infiltrating and dividing in the process.Following an awareness of brazen alterations to Calvinistic doctrine served up by its various leading authors, formidable opposition came in the form of Reformed theologians, none more imposing than OT Allis, who noted the dispensationalist tendency to reverse the accepted method of reading history literally and to read prophecy figuratively.